My position is simply that it’s a good sign if nuclear power is more expensive than other types. We should be suspicious of anything that claims to offer a better deal.
Comment on 40% of US electricity is now emissions-free
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months agoAre you arguing its a “good thing” for existing built plants or for propose plants yet to be built? I wasn’t sure, but the result is the same for both. Nuclear is too expensive for what it provides in the face of better alternatives. I’m happy to back my statements with sources. Which position were you arguing?
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
What an unusual stance. You eluded to the externalities of other sources as your concern. For coal I would agree. However, for wind and solar the studies have shown those to be substantially cheaper even with externalities factored in.
What do you base your reasoning on that wind and solar are not factoring in externalities?
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
My understanding is that wind and PV solar power are similar to most other industries besides nuclear power in that the management of the lifecycles of such deployments isn’t well planned or funded. I myself have encountered a derelict wind farm and I have to wonder if that’s just the way it’s supposed to go after investors extract their short-term profits. As these renewable projects decline in performance (both in terms of actual electricity production and fictional financial viability), I guess the horizon will just keep collecting their skeletons.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This doesn’t seem like a strong argument against wind that a wind farm planned for a 20 year life ran for 20 years, and was then dismantled.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I can only make some assumptions about where the gravity is for your point.
- Are you arguing that a wind farm, once existing, should continue in perpetuity or not be built at all?
- Are you arguing that an abandoned wind farm isn’t pleasant to look at?
I’m interested in your viewpoint.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
There is one thing that new nuclear reactor designs can provide that there is no good alternative for, and that’s consuming existing nuclear fuel. We can use breeder tractors to convert our existing waste into usable fuel for newer reactor types (I want to say Thorium but I’m not positive).
Our best outlook for the future is for us to build at least as much of these are necessary to clean up our nuclear waste.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Building reactors just to reprocess fuel would be a really bad way to solve that problem. If we are requiring reprocessing, there are other countries that run these that we could just ship our fuel to.
Breeder reactors bring some serious security problems
One of the really great things about civilian nuclear power in the USA is that the fuel or waste can never be built into a nuclear bomb. Our reactors run on Uranium-238. This is the most common isotope of uranium and its plenty fissile to reach criticality for power generation. Nuclear bombs use Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239.
The way a Breeder reactor can reprocess fuel is by turning “spent” Uranium-238 into, you guessed it, Plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 can be used to generate electricity in reactors too. So now you’ve got civilian power plants that are housing and handling weapons grade nuclear material. The security of the facility, supply chain, workers and everything suddenly has to go through the roof. All of those things increase the total costs to the resulting electricity. With nuclear already being more expensive than other cleaner and dirtier alternatives, running Breeder reactors makes that nuclear power yet more expensive again!
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Those are certainly difficulties that we’ll need to address. The plutonium especially. I think we could design ways however to keep it secure. It would certainly need to be carefully designed though.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
We certainly could. We do it already today in the USA with our nuclear weapons (which use Plutonium). Its all possible, its just expensive. So much so that it makes an expensive power source (nuclear) even more expensive. Why would we do this when solar costs 5 times less than regular civilian nuclear power?